Within a wireless communication system, it is strongly desirable for cellular antenna arrays to have minimal size for reasons of ease of installation, greater stability under wind loading conditions, and minimal visual obtrusiveness.
One variety of omnidirectional antenna used in cellular installations is a multi-facetted patch array. This type of antenna has a series of patch antenna on facets, and the facets are circumferentially disposed around an axis with each antenna facing outward. A minimum overall array size may be obtained when the facets abut one another, forming a faceted tube.
Existing patch antenna designs have a lower bound on facet sizes because of engineering limitations. These limitations are imposed due to space requirements for: patch antenna width for efficient operation at the required Gigahertz frequencies used in today's cellular systems; the patch antenna ground plane; the interconnection tracking; the printed circuit board (PCB) radio frequency (RF) switch; and the RF cabling used to interconnect to the RF amplifier modules. An antenna array of an unsightly size occurs when sufficient space is allotted for all these requirements on each facet. Further, wind loading characteristics of the resulting sized array imposes mounting stresses on the antenna array and tower.
In view of the foregoing, it would be desirable to provide a technique for providing a patch antenna on an omnidirectional multi-facetted array which overcomes the above-described inadequacies and shortcomings.